Im not a expert on the process you are attempting here , but I
couldnt help to notice a few things.
the illustration you provided appears to show 7 rows of 7 solar collectors which each can provide 300 C temperature to a liquid.
you could probably boil off a olympic sized swimming pool every minute with that array.
Thanks Paul for your comments.
The sketch is just an illustration of the basic concept. Obviously the precise amount of solar collectors for the different process steps still has to be studied.
But in order to be commercially viable, you probably need a rather large array, and lots of biomass.
my point here is ( what is the intended end product).
energy?
or a way to use more energy to produce less energy?
The goal is to densify biomass and preprocess it into a superior product, so that it can replace coal.
Ordinary biomass densification concepts (e.g. first generation pelletisation) do not succeed very well in this context. Torrefaction has a large number of key advantages.
I know that if you are trying to get funding from any of the availiable government funding programs they will not fund anything that truly makes sence or through its process does not use more than it puts out.
thats just the pig headed way that they opperate due to the taxes they get from gasoline sales.
Mm, I'm not really interested in government funding. Just exploring a concept. If investors are interested, that's obviously welcome.
you have a good idea here , and hot liquid expands and when hot liquid expands it gets hotter because of the added pressure from expansion , if the liquid is a contained liquid.
I suppose that this pellet to coal fired plants would be a good way to switch the current 50% of americas energy consumption to bio fuels.
I think liquid biofuels (e.g. cellulosic ethanol or synthetic biofuels) are not the most optimal use of biomass in the grand context of energy for transport.
I see a bigger future in the use of biomass for the production of power and heat - and in electric cars that use this electricity.
Moreover, later on one could couple biomass power plants (or coal plants that switch to torrefied biomass pellets), to CCS, and go carbon-negative.
I just cant understand why we dont just use water through the solar array and turn a steam turbine.
that way our food supplies would not become entangled in the energy market.
You can of course use a traditional CSP concept to generate electricity. But for the moment it's rather expensive and there's no good energy storage technology.
Biomass is stored solar energy. That's the main advantage. It is also the most competitive of all renewables. But in order to make it compete directly with coal, there is a need for better logistics and densification technologies. And it's on this latter point that my concept would elaborate.
